This invention relates to a monitoring system for monitoring the performance of a business operation system, and more particularly, to a business operation monitoring system for monitoring the performance of a business operation system by obtaining packets from a business operation executing computer that executes the business operation system.
Monitoring that is in demand in recent years is conducted for each business operation system provided to a customer, instead of each of individual platforms (for example, a business operation executing computer (business operation executing server), storage, and a network) that constitute a business operation system. There is also a demand from administrators which is to monitor a business operation system without changing the configuration of the business operation system.
A technology of monitoring a business operation executing server has been known in which packets of the business executing server are obtained by utilizing a mirror port of a network switch (referred to as switch) described below.
Specifically, the switch selects at least one of ports of the network switch (mirroring (monitoring) target port) and copies, through mirroring, packets flowing through the port to a mirror port. A management computer (management server) connected to the mirror port obtains the mirrored packets from the mirror port. The management server uses the obtained packets to measure the perceived performance of a business operation system that is felt by end users who use the business operation system, and thereby monitor the response performance of the business operation system.
In the monitoring of a business operation system that uses a mirror port, when the count of mirror ports is smaller than the count of monitoring target ports, there is a chance that more packets than the mirror ports can process flow into the mirror ports. In that event, packet loss occurs and the performance of the switch itself drops as well.
As a countermeasure, a technology is known with which monitoring target ports that are actually monitored by the management server are narrowed down in advance, thereby preventing the copying, through mirroring, of unnecessary packets to mirror ports and accomplishing efficient monitoring (see Patent Literature 1, for example).    Patent Literature 1: Japanese Patent No. 4294673 B2